


Under The Red Dawn

by DemonKing



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Cursed Jaskier, Fix-it fic, Hanahaki Disease, Immortal Jaskier, M/M, Post-Episode 6, Slow Burn, The author Feels Very Sad, Theres a shit ton of yearning, geralt is bad with feelings, letter writing, the author doesn't know how to tag still, yennefer and jaskier will become friends perhaps
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23064499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonKing/pseuds/DemonKing
Summary: With a broken heart, a lute, and an empty coin bag, Jaskier disappears from Geralt's life.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 6
Kudos: 104





	Under The Red Dawn

There is something to be said about having a broken heart. It makes damn good song-writing material. Of course, this is only relevant if you can make something out of it. This was Jaskier’s usual method of dealing with a broken heart, but not this time. This time, not even a moonlit lullaby would heal his broken heart.

His lute laid by his side as he stared at the silent moon. There were no songs inside him anymore, only the charred remnants of his heart and a deafening silence. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been silent for so long. His throat felt full of sand.

In the darkness there was no one to entertain, but nevertheless his tears formed a noose around his neck. He was glad he was alone. He could weep his heart out and drown it. Lies were worthless now. His self-deception had fallen like a curtain on a stage, closing a chapter that he had once hoped would never end.

Never before had he felt the heavy weight of anguish in his chest. He had sung and read of it, but never before had he felt his tongue short of words. He was a bard; his profession thrived on deep emotions such as this but if the words existed, they had not been invented yet. He could feel the thorns developing in his lungs, choking him and depriving him of breath. He growled at the moon, howling for her to take mercy on him.

He took his notebook out. It was full of scribbles and sketches, love letters and songs, songs about Him, his love. He tore the pages out, suddenly furious and wild in his devastation. He threw them into the fire, hoping that the ashes would take every memory of Geralt with them, but he had never been that lucky. Destiny was a cruel mistress that had veiled his eyes with honey only to tear them out with violence and anger.

With a sob, he started writing another love letter. The sincerest one he had ever written. He cursed the sun and the moon and Destiny, blaming them for their cruelty on his human heart.

"My dearest love,

The moon has died many times since I last heard your voice or looked upon your face, yet I cannot help but to foolishly wonder if you have a thought of me to spare.

I must be a fool.

The sight of the sun has become hideous, its beauty stripped away by the thought of your eyes.

At night I awaken like a rabid dog, begging the moon to take away the love from me, staining the darkness with quiet tears that fade onto my hands. I have abandoned all reason and given myself over to the thought of you, of your love.

Her violet eyes have robbed you of sleep and night. There is no moonlight to heal your pain. Or mine.

I'm weak, my love, and I am wanting.

You've ripped the heart from my chest and buried it in the sand, and I have fallen into the dark abyss, with a bleeding heart sewn on the hemline of my coat.”

It had been many moons since that fatidic day, but the memory was fresh on his lips. The anger and the words still attacked him like daggers. Part of him wished Geralt had been merciful and not left him a wounded animal. Part of him realized that he could never send this letter. Geralt would laugh mercilessly at his choice of words and feelings.

He signed his name in a mindless flourish.

“Dandelion.”

He chuckled at the sheer irony of it. He’d chosen that name because dandelions were gifts of happiness and faithfulness. If only his heart had not betrayed him.

For a brief moment he considered, as he had done many times before andagainst his better judgement, sending the letter, but he knew it would be a futile effort to try to reach a Witcher, let alone Geralt of Rivia, with a pathetic love letter. Jaskier was weak to his want and desire, but love can only destroy after a certain time.

That night, just like all the nights since then, he could not sleep. He only wept and crawled like a drunkard who wrote love promises and gifted his anger onto the night sky. He was a man with only pieces of his former self inside his satchel.

The day was soon approaching, dying the earth around him in the soft red that imitated that of blushing lovers. Jaskier cursed the sun once more, hating its warmth and light.

For a moment, he wondered if a monster was stalking him, ready to turn himself over to its jaws, but once again, nothing ever went quite the way he wanted. He grabbed his lute and picked at the strings in a careless manner, not listening to the sound of his own broken voice. He only ever sung sad ballads anymore: ballads of lost love, shattered hearts, unrequited love, and a cruel destiny. His voice shattered like dewdrops as he sung, but the rotten blood inside him drowned him to the point of breaking.

Traveling without Geralt meant constant silence, only interrupted by the times when he forgot he was alone. It was strange to travel without him, to think out loud and ask him to describe his life before Jaskier only to realize that there was only the cold as his companion anymore. He believed this to be the reason that no bandits had dared rob him during these months of isolation. They all thought him to be a druid who had lost his head, but once again, perhaps this was the case. He had become a lunatic who spent his nights howling and crying. Before meeting Geralt, he had traveled all over the continent by himself with no attachments other than the notebook in his satchel, the lute on his back, and the tingling of coins in his purse. He laughed at the memory. Two months ago, his purse had run completely empty of coin, something that hadn’t happened since before Geralt. It was strange to realize that his life was a great divide of before and after meeting the White Wolf, but he supposed this was true of all relationships, whether they were romantic or not.

“But Geralt isn’t just anyone,” he said to himself as he walked down the road to the village he had heard of a few days ago. Love can’t feed a starving artist, especially a love so cruel.

“Geralt isn’t just anyone,” he quietly repeats to himself, “and I am just an idiot who he happened to meet.”

Words flowed to his mind; old words shouted from the top of a mountain. Words that were made of anger and disdain and frustration, words that were as meaningless as the wind, but oh so cold and bitter.

“I can’t blame him though, Witchers don’t have feelings, and he is damn good at pretending that’s true. Of course, they have feelings. Geralt is capable of being a romantic fool, just like me, and he is capable of being blinded to the bleeding wounds that love has brought him, just as I was, just as I am. I am not better myself, a pathetic, helpless, wounded animal. He is capable of caring for someone, just not me, regardless of how much I want him to want me too or even care about me in the slightest.”

The sun followed his shadow as he walked to the village. It was sunset by the time he entered the village, and nightfall when he found the tavern. It was surprisingly well-hidden considering that taverns were usually the most interesting thing in most villages, especially for travelers like him who spent coin, not that he had any coin to spend this time. He didn’t want to sing either. All his songs reminded him of Geralt, and “Fishmonger’s Daughter” can only be sung so many times before you are lynched with stale bread and ale. When he finally gathered the balls to go inside –the smile of a bard plastered on his face and a tuned lute on his hands— he realized that the whole tavern was already singing “Toss A Coin To Your Witcher,” all while very drunk and without a single instrument or bard in sight. He cursed his luck silently. Of course, they were singing that song.

Destiny was a fucking bitch.

He considered turning to the door and keep going on his way to the next village, but his satchel was empty, and he hadn’t had a decent meal in months, a fact that he hadn’t considered until now. Strange how love and a broken heart work together to take hunger away.

At least even if he sung badly, he could get some bread thrown at him.

He joined the singing while playing his lute, attracting the attention of the tavern’s patrons. They kept singing while cheering on, glad that they had an actual bard among them now.

“… Toss a coin to your Witcher, a friend of humanity,” he sung the end of the last stanza, adding a flourish to his voice. This earned him a few coins thrown at him.

_Perhaps I should get a hat for when I get coins thrown at me. I’m thinking a red hat to combine with most my outfits. A fancy hat with feathers._

A patron with a red, chubby face, sprung a heavy mug full of ale to his face, which he reluctantly took. He preferred wine, but it was too early in the night for him to start offending patrons, besides, there was something trustworthy about the man’s features. He reminded Jaskier of his mentor in Oxenfurt.

“Bard,” the chubby faced man started, his strong hand clapping Jaskier’s back in a friendly gesture, “sing us a new tune.”

Jaskier hesitated for a moment. He had no new material but for that song, and he didn’t dare deny the man. “I’ve no happy songs for you tonight.”

“Sing to us regardless, Bard, is good for the heart to die every once in a while. It’s impossible to live forever when you are filled with poison.”

The rest of the tavern either agreed with the man or were too drunk to care because no one asked Jaskier for another song. He wondered if the man could tell that this was the state of Jaskier’s heart. Jaskier nodded and begun his song with a few rapid chords that he always thought represented his heartbeat when he thought of Geralt.

“The fairer sex, they often call it  
But her love's as unfair as a crook  
It steals all my reason…”

A heavy silence fell as Jaskier sung, his voice being the only thing to interrupt it. He felt a small, moon-like tear stream down his cheek as he sung about his weakness and desire but ignored it for the rest of the song. He was a performer after all and one of the best performers to come out of Oxenfurt too. He was determined to finish the song.

“… The story is this  
She'll destroy with her sweet kiss.”

He sung the last words and bowed, wiping away his tear in a non-conspicuous way. The tavern erupted in applause. No one had expected him to actually have a decent, even good, singing voice, and they were all excited to have an actual, professional bard sing for them. Patrons soon started shouting song requests. With enough coins tingling in his pocket and purse to pay for a room and a bottle of wine, Jaskier felt more agreeable to the requests.

The night was to be spent singing for a living, just as he had done before meeting Geralt. He even accepted requests for the songs he had written about the White Wolf, and with each cord, a new thorn was added to his lungs and a new coin to his purse. Some wounds took a long time to heal, he realized, if they healed.

He spent all night playing the lute and singing, grazing the memory of the joy of being a bard. The only thing that had made him happy since he could remember. It was sometime before the early morning when the ruckus died down, and he decided to pay for a room to rest. The red dawn was once again fast approaching and dying everything into a soft, washed-out dream.

The patron with the chubby face resulted being the owner of the inn, and his daughter, who was a blonde, tanned faced young woman with a small, slashing scar on her cheek, was in charge of the inn. She gave him a special price for the room for bringing good business to her father’s pub. She gave him a shy wink, but Jaskier pretended not to notice. It wasn’t his place to hurt her or give her false hope inadvertently. He could not endure doing that to someone else.

The room was measly but surprisingly clean, with a small bed with white sheets in the corner and a window that looked into the forest. He took his remaining coins and counted them, slipping them inside his purse afterwards. He checked the chair he had put on the door to make sure his room was locked, put his purse under the thin and slipped into the bed. He thought how odd it was that the bed seemed soft to him after sleeping on the floor for so long. The forest in front of his window was covered in a muted sunlight, but he didn’t bother to close the windows. His bones were far too tired to get up for the next three days.

He closed his eyes slowly, and a last image popped into his brain: soft yellow eyes that pierced him like an arrow.

He had no dreams that night, only the warmth of the ale and wine coursing through his veins, the image of yellow eyes, and the poison that devoured his soul. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope to upload at least once a month, but alas, I am in college, so I might write often and not so often.  
> Please do be patient with me because I have dumb bitch disease, but mostly because it takes me long to write sometimes :c


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